


Ground Control

by Niice2knou



Series: Fucking Aliens [1]
Category: All Time Low, We Are the In Crowd
Genre: Aliens, All Time Low (Band) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Aliens, Alternate Universe - College/University, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-21 18:12:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11949840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niice2knou/pseuds/Niice2knou
Summary: After a strange experience on a graduation road trip, Alex Gaskarth finds himself buried in fixation over a strange mark that appeared on his neck.-You should check out my past work that I did for the Alltimefanfiction contest, 'Do you Believe in Aliens?' to know what the fuck is going on, yo.





	1. Chapter 1

Alex Gaskarth’s body shot up from his bed, his eyes wide and breathing shallow. The room around him was dark, and relatively cold. This could have been attributed to the fact that his entire form was covered in sweat- so much that his clothes clung tightly to his body as if he had won a wet t-shirt competition.   
His eyes scanned the room quickly, trying to make out where he was. It dawned on him that he was in no danger when the outline of his roommate stuffed under thick Star Wars bedding came into view. He let out a short sigh and fell back on the bed, pushing his damp fringe away from his forehead. “Fuck,” He breathed.   
This was almost a nightly occurrence for the 20-year-old. Since that camping trip in the desert Alex had woken up in a fit, images from … whatever happened having plagued his dreams. He hadn’t been able to get much sleep since then. 

“Guess it’s time to get up, Lex.” The groggy college student mumbled as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, taking his blankets to the floor with them. A small groan ebbed its way past his lips. Alex stepped over the bedding and walked to his dresser, grabbing a pair of sweats and a thin hoodie as he made his way out of the room and in the direction of the showers. It was barely 7 am, so there were only a few sleep deprived students roaming the halls of the co-ed dorms. All with their morning fixes gripped tightly in their hands. Anything from a cup of coffee to a spliff could be found scattered along the residents of NYU’s campus. 

“Fuck, you never sleep.” A petite girl said as she walked out of her dorm, also carrying a small pile of clothes in her arms. More than likely doing the same as Gaskarth. Her dark hair was standing up like it normally did, making Alex laugh. “You’re up too, Tay.” He commented as they fell into step next to each other. Alex had made a point to attempt to make new friends while away at college. Being away from his boyfriend and best friends obviously wasn’t easy, but he had a goal in mind and was going to keep with it. Tay was someone that even though they talked maybe once every day, Alex Gaskarth considered a friend. Sure, they had never talked more than their stint in the hallways waiting for a shower to open up, but it was enough for the young adult, who had only managed to get along with his roommate because they both liked space shit. His time in the desert had sparked most of that interest. 

“My sorority is having a party tonight, you should come.” The girl said, dragging Alex’s disoriented attention back in her direction. “Hm? I never pegged you for a sorority girl. Or was that sexist to assume?” He asked, not totally on the ups on how to talk to a liberal arts major without coming off as a dick. That came from growing up in hella conservative Maryland. Not that that was an excuse, though.   
“No, you’re fine. I’m really not, but my mom was a part of Alpha Epsilon Phi, so I’m a legacy. Kind of a rule that if I don’t join that I’m not allowed to come home.” She shrugged some as she spoke. Her tone showed a hint of joking, but with the lack of social skills Alex had outside of Jack, Rian, and Zack, he wasn’t totally sure if that was the case. “Oh, well Have fun with that?”  
“It's crazy, we talk every day but I know next to nothing about you. Not even your full name.” The tight featured girl said once they were in front of the showers, turning her body in his direction and looking to Alex's face. She was a good bit shorter than his 6 feet. Small mouth and nose, but the biggest eyes. These were all very well hidden under the nest of emo swoop and curl that belonged to Taylor’s scalp. He cleared his throat a bit before speaking, a little antsy to get to his shower knowing full well that he stunk badly and probably should have at least attempted to make it look like he hadn’t sweat all the water from his body.   
“It’s Alex Gaskarth.” He stated, shifting his stance from one leg to the other. 

“I said full name.” Tay urged, a small grin stretching over her face. 

Alex rolled his eyes a little, finding it all a little daunting for 6 am. “Alexander William Gaskarth.” He said slowly, so that she could catch every syllable. Her mouth had trained on his as he spoke, which made him a little uncomfortable when he noticed.   
“My turn,” She said as she backed away, finally shifting her gaze. “It’s Taylor Kathleen Jardine.” With that she turned completely and walked into the girl's room.   
“Fucking crazy.” Alex mumbled as he went into the boys. 

Most of Alex’s day went by pretty slowly. He had been hoping to get a call from Jack at some point that day, but he was also very aware that his boyfriend also spent most of his time sleeping in. They had both chosen very different routes; Alex picking law so that he could put his argumentative personality to work, and Jack choosing to take time off to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. At that point, it seemed like he would be laying on his mom's couch and eating pizza bagels for the rest of his life. 

The moment he was out of class, Alex’s phone was in his hand and he was checking it for the millionth time, still not showing anything from the lanky asshole, who had promised Alex he would at least text him once a day. An annoyed huff fell from his mouth as Alex pocketed the device and adjusted his fucking gay messenger bag on his shoulder. He was just really lonely these days, and really did not want to walk in on his roommate jerking off to his world of Warcraft avatar again. Fucking Evan. 

“Tough day?” 

Another groan came from Alex’s mouth.

“My boyfriend is an asshole and I hate him.” He whined, not even having to look to know that Taylor had positioned herself next to him. By this time the hallway had cleared out and it was just the two of them, both looking like they were very ready for a long nap. College seemed to drain every ounce of life out of a person. Taylor rubbed her hand against her cheek in a thoughtful motion and chewed her lip. “I’m taking you for pizza.” She said affirmatively. Alex looked at her then, raising a far too thick eyebrow. “You are?”   
“Yep. You’re down, and since we’re best friends now I think it’s only fair to treat you.” 

Alex wasn’t sure how to take that, but nodded. Taylor’s hand gripped his and drug him in the direction of the exit, causing him to stumble behind her.   
Alex followed behind the girl, his feet tangling a bit as he did. His long limbs always seemed to knot up and not do what his brain told them to.   
Taylor lead him to a small on campus pizza place, with a name Alex wasn't even going to try and pronounce. They sat at an obviously dirty table. Once they ordered Alex realized how little he had to talk about. When the silence stretched on from seconds to minutes, he wracked his brain for a topic. Taylors fingers were drumming on the table, the little nails hitting it loudly. She was looking off in another direction, her teeth digging into her lower lip. 

Alex's hand went up to his neck, tracing the scar tissue around the arrangement of circles that had been inked into the skin. This had become as bad of a habit as twisting his hair or biting his nails. 

"You have a neck tattoo?" The girl asked, catching his attention only for him to realize he had been staring idly at her. He blushed. 

"I... do. Yeah." Alex wasn't sure how to talk about the art, or whatever it was. He wasn't even sure what it was or what it meant. It was just thick, black, hollow circles. Oddly there weren’t any shaky lines, they were perfect. One large one, surrounded by a group of much smaller ones with thinner lines. Then a few within the bigger circle, slowly getting smaller. 

"What is it?" She urged, reaching over and moving his hand, the other pushing the hair on his neck away so Tay could see it better. 

"Just something I drew in class. I really liked it." He replied, the normal answer. The one he gave his mom when she nearly killed him for getting a tattoo without her permission. Even though he was an adult. But that was a different battle entirely. 

"It's really cool. I feel like I've totally seen that before. Like, have you ever seen crop circles? That's what that looks like." Taylor said this sheepishly, as if she was embarrassed to admit she knew what the fuck a crop circle was.   
"Yeah, that's what I thought too." 

 

Alex was always a little shy talking about things that connected to that summer in the desert. It always made his skin prickle and he felt like he was being watched, but with Tay it felt a lot easier. She didn't feel like a stranger, but like he could openly talk about fucking aliens and she would believe every word that came out of his mouth. 

"I uh, watch a lot of alien documentaries." She admitted, tucking her bangs behind her ears. Taylor was attractive, and had Alex not totally defined himself as a huge gay, he might have thought she was cute. She had the air of an anime character with the giggly and - dare he say- kawaii way that she carried herself.

Alex suddenly felt the need to reassure her. “I do too,” He said quickly, the words falling out of his mouth before he could think better of it. Truth be told he was totally obsessed with space and aliens and whatever else went with trying to sort out his experience last summer. Most of his vacation had been spent deep searching similar things that had happened to people. Alex had uncovered loads of abductions of the little green man variety happening in that same area. That information alone made the mark on his neck start to ache. 

Taylors whole face lit up at the admission. “Oh, thank God.” She said, exhaling loudly and letting her body crumple down so that her head was laid across her arms on the table, looking up at Alex with a small smile on her face. “I thought for sure that I’d scared you off or something. It’s nice that you’re not as pretentious as you look.” 

Alex and Taylor continued their conversations over the worst pizza known to mankind, but for the first time in a while Alex didn’t think too much about the ins and outs of the situation. All he cared about was that he had made a friend.


	2. Chapter 2

It was midnight, and Alex Gaskarth’s attention was fully centered on his homework. Or at least he wanted to be. He couldn’t focus, and he kept thinking about how Taylor said that she felt like she had seen the mark on his neck before. This had been two days ago, and aside from their little stints in the hallways, Alex hadn’t seen the girl around much- certainly not long enough to casually ask her what the fuck she meant by that.   
He sat up straighter, letting out a small groan as he stretched, letting himself totally realize just how long he had been hunched over his books. He glanced at his roommate, who was always sleeping or eating when he saw him. This time he was sleeping. “God, I hate it here.” he mumbled, picking up his phone and hardly even standing up from his place in the chair before rotating to fall into his bed. He unlocked his phone, a text from jack had been left unread for an hour. Alex wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk to him. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Jack anymore- he was fairly certain that he loved him- but he was just uncomfortable and lonely and the only thing Jack texted him about was how hard he was. That made things downright depressing. Alex finally opted to unlock the phone, reading over the message again before replying to him. The weight of the message just being that he wasn’t in the mood, and was very lonely and wished Jack was there. Jack didn’t text back immediately. Alex didn’t expect him to. 

A loud yawn fell from his lips and he rolled onto his side, staring at the wall, a wash of what Alex could only assume was longing hitting him hard. The pillow next to him was pulled into his chest and he couldn’t help but really miss being at home. College was pointless, and he hated it, and he didn’t feel like he was learning anything. So why was he even fucking here? He wanted to cry.   
At some point Alex knocked out, still gripping the pillow tightly and his face scrunched up as he slept. His dreams were just as troubled as his waking thoughts. 

Alex was in a room. His hands were visibly tied down with thick leather straps and he tugged hard against them. He didn’t feel them cut into his skin like he’d expected, and that was his first queue that he was dreaming. The room itself was pretty empty, off white walls and gray carpets. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that someone had taken everything out of his dorm room and replaced his own bed with whatever the fuck he was laying on. He was worried that this was one of those bizarre kinky dreams that he’d had back at home, where he realized that there was some really strange budding part of his sexuality that he’d managed to overlook. 

The room was silent, which was his second queue that this was a dream. It wasn’t like, quiet. There was no noise, that weird silence where not even your motions make noise that you can only experience in the creepiest of fucking dreams. As he struggled with the restraints, Alex noticed that the room seemed to be getting brighter—as if the once off-white walls were gaining harshness. He looked up, squinting at the source of the light. The door that would usually lead to the hallway of his dorm was creaking open, and revealing nothing but bright, hot, white light. He began struggling more, that same pit in his stomach that had taken place when he was in the white room was suddenly there in full force. He was terrified. Alex needed to get away. 

“Alex, Fucking Alex.” 

The young adult’s eyes snapped opened, his breathing shallow and his throat feeling raw. He was met with the face of his roommate, Evan. “Are you done screaming?” Evan asked, obvious annoyance taking over his features.   
Alex automatically felt bad. He had woken Evan up with his nightmares. It was one thing for him to lose sleep due to his crumbling mental state, but he didn’t think that Evan- no matter how god damn annoying he may be- should be losing sleep over it too.   
“Uh, yeah. Sorry. Bad dream.” Alex mumbled, sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck apologetically. He reached for his phone, wanting to check the time. 

“It’s 3 am. You’re buying me breakfast.” Evan stated as he moved over to his side of the room, raking the mess of scene kid hair back from his face and falling onto his perpetually unmade bed. “yeah, no problem. It’s like, the least I can do.” Alex mumbled, picking his shirt away from his torso. He really needed to stop wearing a shirt to bed. He laid back, rubbing his hands over his face and letting out a long sigh. This was getting to be too much, the dreams. They came and went, but when they came back they always reminded him that whatever happened to him was totally not normal. Alex hadn’t been totally obsessed with finding the truth. Honestly, he had wanted to ignore it once he’d concluded that aliens of all things could be the answer. There was no fucking way that that was it.   
More than anything he wanted Taylor there. 

Alex was tired of keeping things in. The last time he’d tried to tell anyone, it was Jack. Given, telling Jack much of anything was always a dead end, because he was a mess of affection and sexual tendencies that generally got in the way of any sort of real conversation, but Alex had really tried, and really wanted to just fucking tell someone. Taylor listened to him, which was a nice change.   
Alex knew that it was too early, though. She was always up absurdly early, but he highly doubted that she would be up at 3 am, and willing to talk to him about space men. 

“Earth to Alex,” Evan said loudly, making the other boy jump a little. 

“Yeah?” He responded, shaking his head as if to shake away the overwhelming thoughts. 

“Breakfast. Get up.” Evan nudged Alex with his foot, pushing him off the bed. After Alex changed they made their way to the cafeteria, where Alex mindlessly listened to Evan ramble on about some game he was playing. It wasn’t that Alex didn’t want to listen, in fact he probably would have listened to him talk and enjoy it, but lately he’d felt himself becoming more withdrawn and reserved towards people. He couldn’t figure out why, but people just stopped being interesting. Obviously, that didn’t apply to Taylor, who had managed to shove her way into Alex’s thoughts even more than Jack had.   
Through the rest of the day, Alex scanned rooms and hallways for Tay, dying to say something to her about the dream. He really trusted her. It was noon when he finally gave up looking and settled in the library to actually study for his classes, because his math classes were kicking his ass and he really did not need to fail out of college. Alex was also pretty sure Evan needed the dorm for whatever it was that Evan did in his free time. Probably whacking off. That was most of what Evan did.   
Alex made a mental note to get that guy a girlfriend. 

While he scanned the pages of his math book, that honestly had not even been opened since it had been bought, he heard his phone—or more so felt his phone buzz in his back pocket. Alex felt a sudden pang in his stomach, really hoping that it was Jack, who had been the worst boyfriend known to mankind lately. It wasn’t even like he had much of a social life, all he fucking did was lay around at his mom’s house, so really how hard was it to pick up a cell phone and call your significant other every once in a while? 

To his relief, it was Jack. He accepted the call and picked up his things, because fuck studying. “Hey, Long time no speak.” Alex said in a slightly annoyed, but hushed tone. He really didn’t want anyone slinging a paper ball at him for being too loud. 

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I’m sorry babe. My mom has been forcing me to go to all these work interviews, but I’m not really qualified for anything so…” Jack trailed off for a second before catching his train of thought again. 

“Oh, so how are things?” Jack spoke casually, as if it hadn’t been days since they had spoken, and they’re stopped talking after Alex refused to sext him.   
Alex shrugged, shielding his eyes with the back of his hand once he had made his way out of the building. “Things are okay. I miss you, and you suck at texting.” He stated, whining only slightly. Alex had a different way of talking to Jack than other people; he could be more vulnerable, and soft. Alex didn’t have to act like it was him against the world, or at least didn’t used to. Lately he felt like he was forgetting the reasons why they were even together. There had been a few years that things were perfect after they had initially gotten together. Alex honestly thought that they would always be with each other. 

“I know babe, I’m sorry. Look, Rian and I are taking a weekend break and wanted to come and see you, if you’re not too busy.” Jack said this as if it made up for all the lost time and ignored texts. It did. 

Alex felt a wide smile cross over his features. “I miss you more anything, what makes you think I would be too busy for you guys?” Alex asked, leaning against the side of the building, his free hand adjusting his bag on his shoulder and then shifting to twist the short hairs in his bangs. 

“I don’t know, just thought maybe you had a test or something—whatever just, I can’t wait to see you. Maybe we can go to dinner or something? I need an excuse to see you all dressed up. My little hotshot lawyer.” Jack always had a habit of making Alex feel important as hell, and it was weird that he could go from completely doubting their relationship to cloud 9 in a matter of seconds, but that just showed what kind of person his boyfriend was. Alex wasn’t sure it was a good thing. But He loved Jack, and knew that they could make this work. It was just distance. That wasn’t too hard to deal with, people handled that kind of thing all the time. If they could, he could too.


End file.
